The short non-spoiler take: Holy crap! My take on the Battlestar Galactica series finale was that it was 99% incredibly satisfying and delivered beyond what I was hoping for. In the end, it seems destiny will be what it will be, much like fighting gravity.
The finale was heart pounding. I did not need coffee to stay up for this one. The advertising for this final episode spouted endlessly that we will know the truth. Indeed. The ending was satisfying, sad, fulfilling and the truth of it all confused me.
Sure, there were a few loopholes or discontinuities but I chose to focus on where they were going, not what they were missing or glazing over. They had to get somewhere without being so verbose that it distracted from the end game.
DVR / DVD SPOILERS LAY AHEAD BEYOND THIS POINT – Come back after you’ve bought or watched it and add your thoughts then!
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I sat down and committed my household to Battlestar Galactica (BSG) all night long. I started focusing on it during the replay of the special from Monday evening when Ronald D. Moore quipped about the phrase on how it “all happened before and it will all happen again” came about from a scene he saw in Peter Pan where they said that.
I don’t remember anyone in BSG thinking happy thoughts, or flying… except out of airlocks!
A Nagging Theme Or Two
The one theme that has been present since the very first episode was No 6 in Baltar’s head telling him “Trust in God’s plan for you.” This was presented to us time and time again throughout the 4 (or was it 6?) seasons!
The other nagging theme that always lurked below the surface of my tortured mind was a point made midway through the series, and that was the ability that Cylons had to project themselves into fantasy worlds that they build in their heads.
Why? Because of the visions that some of the humans had throughout the show. Baltar with his hot No. 6, in his head. Lucky Bastard. But there were the shared visions between Baltar, Caprica, Hera, Athena and Laura had of the opera house. That always had me suspicious, period.
And Starbuck? She didn’t have visions. But her artistic tendencies to draw symbols from mankind’s destiny and being called the harbinger of death kind of makes you wonder about her. Then coming back from death but not being a Cylon? WTH was that? But more on all this later. Or will there be? Maybe I’ll just stop typing… and call it God’s plan.
The Finale Delivers In Bucket Loads
Watching scenes of our favored characters in Caprica city, “Before the Fall” really drove home their lives as they were developing before it all happened. The back story was great to see. Pondering the label, “Before the Fall“: I have to look back and wonder, was that past tense, or future tense, since this all going to happen again?
Watching the preparations on the Galactica to head off to get Hera back hit home with some good emotional anchors:
- Adama turning over command of the fleet,
- Anders tank being hooked up into the CiC.*
- Lee Adama making Romo Lampkin President, in his absence.
- Or the surreal scene of a squad of Centurions in the flight deck, preparing for battle.
*Tigh telling Adama it wasn’t too late to shove all the Cylons in the CiC out the airlock and Adama saying it would take too much time. – was frakking hilarious and poignant to me. The Cylon TIgh, looking to jettison Cylons, staying true to the humanity, the commander and the ship he grew to love.
Action Stations
When the Galactica jumped in on top of this freaky new looking Cylon ship that reminded me a bit of the Shadow ships from Babylon 5, the ensuing firefight left me wondering if the Galactica would survive.
Then the Galactica ramming into the hull of Cavil’s ship, making their own airlock with the ship and ground teams dispersing into the Cylon ship, looking for Hera. Now that’s how you make an entrance!
Watching new and old style Centurions in battle was surreal. Even if the CGI seemed a little bit funny with the old Centurions. Did you notice that?
A Momentary Truce
The humans get Hera, but Cavil snags her back. Finally, Gaius, for all his chitter chatter, finally hits his stride and serves his purpose in this entire mythos as he talks Cavil into a truce.
It’s here that Gaius says that he tells Cavil that he sees angels (The In-the-head Caprica and Gaius) and that there are other forces at work via puzzles deciphered in prophecy, by dreams given to a chosen few.
I was on edge waiting for that other shoe to drop from Cavil’s side, and boy, did it. Tyrol interrupts a data stream when he discovers that Tory was who killed Cally and in his rage, Tyrol kills Tory, which ends the cease-fire everyone had. So much for peace.
Destiny Takes Its Path
Chaos ensued and Adama yells at Starbuck to jump them out of there but she has no coordinates. Instead she inputs the numbers that she’s associated with the song that Hera drew out and gave her.
Plop. Kara’s coordinates put them right on top of the moon, our moon, with our Earth in sight. I actually never expected to see this. Despite being teased us at times when we could see constellations in the background we recognize, like Orion, but I just thought they were messing with my mind. (It’s not that hard sometimes!)
After scoping out the planet and its spear carrying human species, they decide to stay and blend in. But how they do it confused me. Or more in-line with the show, took a leap of faith to follow their actions.
What’s left of humanity shuns technology and blends with the natives… our ancestors.
Adama makes the decision to have Anders drive the ships of the fleet and all its technology into the Sun, and live out their years with the natives, without their technology. Technology has been their curse. They’re done with it. No one seems to argue.
William Adama tells Laura that he calls this Earth because Earth is a dream they’ve been chasing for a long time.
Tough And Touching Moments
Starbuck saying goodbye to Anders in his tank, who pulls through his Cylon induced fog to tell her that he’ll see her on the other side. Eh?
Watching William Adama being the last person to leave the Galactica in his old Viper, looking over the fleet one last time.
Watching William Adama bid farewell to Lee and flies off into the distance with Laura in the Raptor with him, who dies in-flight. Bill builds a little home and talks to her grave, updating her on what’s up.
Not a surprise, Tyrol has had it with people and goes off to his own island.
Gaius and Caprica together with no trauma going on in the background finally. For possibly for the first time, Gaius can have a grieving moment for his father. They then head off to do what Gaius knows… farming.
My “What the Frak” Moment
Lee and Kara are talking about what they’re going to do, now that everyone is off doing what they’re gonna do. Kara says that she is leaving. She’s done here and has completed her journey and just vanishes in mid conversation. That’s it.
Backtrack: Remember when Baltar announced to the assembled crowd that his study of Kara’s blood proved that Kara was 100% human? If you paid attention, Gaius said that the blood on the pendant that came from the corpse is 100% human. I got caught up with everything the first time and missed that. I thought he was proving Kara was human, but I noticed this the 2nd time through, he proved the dead pilot back on the burnt out Earth was human.
The Future Happens Anyway
150,000 years into the future, we see downtown New York. We learn that humanity has discovered the mitochondrial Eve, the woman to whom all of humanity can be traced to. Hera. We also see humanity starting to build bipedal robots and what not… here we go again!
The Big Reveal
Looking over Ronald D. Moore’s shoulder in his cameo appearance in one of the final scenes, stands the in-their-heads versions of Gaius and Caprica. WTF? They make note of the fact that Eve was discovered in Tanzania and how Eve was found alongside her Human and Cylon parents.
Caprica said something about how even though it happened before, that mathematically speaking, there’s a chance it won’t happen again. Then they mention god, and Gaius reminds her that he doesn’t like being called that. Eh? The Matrix?
I got confused here. Is society pretty much Cylon at this point? Are these two really angels, or Cylons? Has this just been a big master plan, a tale from god that we’ve watched all along? Are we being being set up for a sequel in case they decide to go with that?
My Take
The finale was a big payoff.
I really enjoyed just about every single second of it. There was tons of satisfying action. That final jump by the Galactica was way awesome! As it popped out of FTL flight near Earth, it flexed, wobbled and rippled – pieces and parts being flung off in the aftermath. I thought it was going to end right there.
Yet once everyone is on the planet, everyone seemed agreeable to give up technology for spears. I get it… yet really, would you? NO! I want my microwave and cell phone and laptop damnit. Hmm… that would mean building the internet all over again.
It was a very fairy tale ending in this rag tag fleet of humans just seeming to go along with this decision, so I had a little bit of a problem with this. Yet, like I said at the front of this article, suspending disbelief to allow for the story to be moved along.
Kara
What in blue blazes was Kara Thrace? A ghost that EVERYONE saw? Another angel? An ascended being from Stargate. (She’s in a lot of trouble if that’s the case)
Was Kara something that everyone wanted, or needed to see? It’s been said that Moore said she can be whatever we wanted her to be. That feels like a cop out. Why, after delivering so many answers, do we get this grey answer to one of the biggest developments in the mythos? I’d like to have had Kara explained. Plain and simple. Especially since everyone saw and interacted with her. Especially since she had a life she lived which fed to this point in time.
As far as we can tell, even she didn’t know until that very last moment. Come on, Moore. I would have liked you do give more than this to us.
Angels?
So if we go back to literally day one of this whole thing, angels have been guiding Gaius and later, Caprica on their paths? Has this really been their story all along? Have the humans been nothing but pawns in this entire series?
If so, the sufferance of humanity seems cheapened by this new wrinkle. Well, at least it didn’t end on a Holodeck, but it sure felt close to that.
I’m not unhappy
The entire series broached a whole new kind of entertainment. The kind that deals with our fears and hopes and realities of what is and what could be. It dealt with how we do have control of our destiny. But we can only control our destinies just so far until they intertwine with others. Then the group destiny that we become a part of, no matter what else we do is what dictates our end game. That’s what I took away from the series.
Now we have to watch this whole series all over again, and watch it from the angels point of view as they guide our hapless characters along their sordid way.
The Sad
But for now, there will be no more new episodes. Sure, we’ll have a few movies that take place during the series time frame. Sure, we’ll have the prequel, Caprica. But the end of the show has been laid before us. Battlestar Galactica, the journey, has found its goal.
It’s time to say farewell to the journeys of William Adama, Laura Roslin, Kara Thrace, Lee Adama, Gaius Baltar, Saul Tigh, Doc Cottle, Helo Agathon, Galen Tyrol, Ellen Tigh, Felix Gaeta, Sharon Valerii, Caprica Six, Tom Zarek, Romo Lampkin, Cavil, Sam Anders and the coolest, new Centurions.
My Question To You
For you, what character really made the show. What event really hit home in the series that resonated with you?
Update: 3/29/09: I’ve added some perspectives on some of Moore’s approach to the Battlestar Galactica series in a new article we’ve published.
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143 Comments
Ian,
No problem, bud. But you’ll pardon me if I don’t choose this as a place to get into a debate on this, which would most likely be futile in any case.
Best regards,
Vic
I was satisfied with the finale. It gave all the viewers a lot to think about.
I also like how some answers were explained and how some were left in the air.
Since when there has to be an explanation to every question out there?
There is a sense of mystery to those unsolved questions and that was done beutifully. Life’s questions are full of mystery and wonder.
Most people whined about those uncleared anwers that were given. Some answers can’t be phatom by mere mortals let a lone Sci-fi, come on people you didn’t get the picture as a whole and for crying out loud, you’re knit picking everything too much.
Stop over analyzing everything and just enjoy the ending to a wonderful series.
Mysteries don’t all have to be solved or explained, it just is what it is.
Why was it so hard to believe that there are greater forces out there and they are connected with the rest of the universe in some way.
I think that a lot of you wanted everyone to have a happy ending, the reality is that although we wish for everyone to have this ideal happy ending, not everyone gets to actually have a “happy” ending but an “ending” of some kind. I think it was well put together for the ending that BSG deserved.
Not everyone gets these happy ending but knowing that they have done their part and completed their journey is more satisfying and rewarding to the individual than a “happy” ending.
@Ella – The point to TV, particularly sci-fi, is to make the viewer question. The best TV shows are not the ones where the viewer is entirely passive but where questions and discussion are provoked.
As for mysteries… yes, they do have to be explained; why let them sit unanswered? Because man wants to know what is over the mountain or on the other side of the river or over the sea is a major driving force behind humanity. A large part of our existence is about driving toward understanding what we don’t yet comprehend.
Like you, I don’t like happy endings for the sake of happy endings. I prefer a realistic (happy or unhappy) ending that provokes thought, but more than that, I prefer a _meaningful_ ending where the primary motivations that drove the story along are not discarded or rendered meaningless by an external force.
The ending to BSG was, to my mind as bad as the Shadow War in B5 where, after 3 seasons of humans being drawn to the point of total annihilation between the shadows and vorlons, it all ended with Sheridan screaming for them to, “get the hell out of our galaxy”
Or, from DS9, where an entire season was built up to suggest that the Federation was going to fall to vastly superior forces, with zero chance of survival, only to have those forces wink out of existence as they started to emerge from th wormhole, all because some ethereal force decided to wipe them out.
Or, as in BSG where, after a monumental struggle to survive and extinction is absolutely guaranteed, magic suddenly appears in a world and makes all the problems go away.
All three are weak endings that betrayed the story that came before.
ELLA:
A well said, concise and to the point comment.
Awesome.
Well, this is one way to start a day.
@Ian
…A panda cub sneezing is compelling. So are car crashes and unexpected odors. That’s how compelling your ending is. I was just tryin to figure out what expired in your fridge. But…
ELLA changed my mind and made a really great point, so I’m gonna just spray some Lysol on this and walk away from it.
Personally, I wanna say the number 12 is pretty important considering Ron Moore says it in interviews all the way back that it’s religious and important to the show. You’re trying to say it means nothing and isn’t important, just something you saw in the show that don’t matter. “… so your interpretation is absolutely incorrect, according to Moore” –Ian’s old logic
Sounds like somebody tryin to eat their cake and have it too.
Make up your mind, whether you’re talking about people on a macro or micro scale. Nazis were an appropriate, relevant argument, when you’re talking about the whole human race. I’m still triyng to figure out where euthanasia comes into it. Because somehow quality of life, to me, had more to do with whether your idea meant humans should go about living like Cylons and cloning themselves than it did whether Gaeta, Anders or Roslin should’ve thought about killing themselves. [It's called context] And yours doesn’t have much when you’re talking about Galactica.
And quit being dramatic about superman. You misspelled it. I said super-man meaning ubermensch. Hitler’s idea of the fully realized human sacrificing those who don’t point towards the criteria. [read: relevant]
Now, I think it’s pretty easy at this point to sniff out where this…ripeness…comes from. You and I have such different views of what this show is and what goals the show had. When Boomer tried to kill herself, because she found out she was a Cylon, I stopped looking at the show as black and white.
Don’t get me wrong, you’re ending is clever and would be a good one to a much different show, say if Battlestar had more of House’s ideology towards life from the get-go.
I didn’t look at the goals of the show being as simple as: they need to end the war and find a new place to live. I saw the show as how a people can learn to define their own humanity, when for the first time something else has stepped up to replace them. How similar are the two endings, when one prescribes a war unending, while the real one says that nothing is certain, but there can still be hope for the future.
In one the Cylons are always at war with the Humans, in the other they come together and come to realize a good amount about themselves through it. All they learn in your version is that they need to keep surviving so that they can keep going to war. Your idea is that the show should boil down to a bitter endless war, like the one in the Middle East. (I guess that would make God a UN that works)
I’m not saying the ending they chose is perfect, it’s just better than yours and much better than you think it is, mostly because they either had to edit down, because they got a little too indulgent on their characters or just didn’t have enough of a budget to really hit home what the ending meant. I mean there should’ve been shots of people living in their colonies with Cylons. They should’ve spent more time letting the choices this new civilization made set in. They didn’t sell it nearly as much as they sold that we were the future.
They’re saying that this way there’s an oppurtunity. Maybe this is the first time that the two warring races met in the middle. The robots found their humanity and the humans found their tolerance.
Besides, working a reasonable way to kill everybody save for a few, without the majority of the fanbase doing the group grimace would be more than a little difficult, unless they all manage to stuff into a raptor before Galactica gets nuked or something. I promise you it’d come off much more unpolished than this ending.
And that’s what this was, the end of the journey, Galactica and the war. Your ‘ending’ manages to conclude maybe one of those. I think struggle is what they’ve been through and hope starts when the war ends.
Maybe you AREN’T READING WHAT I’M WRITING, when you can say that both races accepting one another is ‘completely hopeless.’
Somehow, I managed to miss the point that technology had outpaced humanity, when [[I was the one who brought it up]] and Lee pretty flatly said it in the finale. But then, I must not have been paying attention. And I didn’t say your ending would be terrifying, I said it would be disgusting, because of all the things you’d manage to take away from and deconstruct of the show.
I don’t think anything they did involved sitting around waiting for magical intervention. If that was true, then they probably should’ve just drifted through space hoping Hera would find her way back to Galactica. It wasn’t about saying alright they beat the Cylons here or they lost there or maybe something can turn the tide for them. They…fully…expected not to come back. It was a matter of ending the war definitively, by making sure the warring Cylons never reproduced and the conflict wouldn’t outllive that generation.
They put their hope in the fleet finding a new home devoid of this war and that ending fest like a fast-forwarding of what could or would have happened. I really want to understand how that’s failing miserably. It didn’t make me or a lot of other people, miserable.
GUYS: You both made your points. Both have merit in their own rights.
Is there a reason you’re going back and forth rehashing it with mini-novels?
Just wondering?
Yea…I thought I had a bit more restraint before this all began. But I already consider my last post, the last thing I have to say on the, uh…re-directed topic…
Sorry about muscling the comment board. I’m done.
Yes, please, let’s be done. I don’t want to shut down this thread for comments just because of you two. I’ve made my peace with Ian, so you guys learn to get along as well.
Vic
We are not supposed to like or even understand all the answers these are issues each charactor must come to terms with on their own. We as viewers are simply observers nothing more.
@Paterick – I’ll ignore the childish ranting (lysol, pandas, etc., blah, blah), and address your comments directly. I’ll even ignore your deliberate attempts to twist my words and goad a counter.
First of all, I didn’t dispute that Moore considered the number 12 to be of religious significance and so this is the reason it appears so often in the BSG universe. What I said was that the number is just a number – it is not, in and of itself, inherently religious. THINGS can not be religious; they can have religious significance to people but that is a very different thing from their being religious in and of themselves. Ultimately, the point that I have reiterated several times already, was that *I chose* 12 survivors PURELY because the number appears in BSG so often, not because Moore perceives a religious significance to the number.
My discussions of ‘humanity’ have been in two contexts; one, the physical sense (i.e. a set of human entities, in this case, all living humans, whether 6 billion or 40,000 or 17) and, two, the sense of what it is to be human. I’ve never, in any of my arguments talked about humanity in a “micro” sense. Frankly, I can’t see anything that could have led you to think that.
I brought up euthenasia because you made the point that humanity does not choose quality of life over quantity and I was showing that, yes, we do. A person whose quality of life has been severely degraded due to illness, disfigurement or incapacitation but who is otherwise healthy (in the sense that there is no reason to suggest they would NOT live long enough to die of old age) and yet chooses to end his or her life rather than live with a degraded quality of life has made the clear choice to sacrifice quantity. People who are terminal and face the choice of 2 months feeling relatively normal without treatment versus 6 months feeling terrible due to treatment, often make the choice of enjoying the final two months without treatment.
Super-men, supermen… both are acceptable spellings, but if you can’t see the point of the comment because of a missing hyphen (new laptop, unfamiliar keyboard, lots of typos), that’s just being petty. Address the argument or ignore it, but don’t be petty. Your reply is riddled with errors but I’m not flagging them and using them as an excuse to deliberately reinterpret your responses, so please offer the same courtesy.
On the point of how a few humans could survive, well, the fact that the Final Five survived THEIR round of war, it’s clearly possible that a few individuals can survive to fight (or not) another day. The fact that 50,000 humans out of billions can survive a nuclear holocaust also clearly shows that a relatively few can survive while the majority perish. Also, we clearly saw Racetrack (and presumably there would be other pilots) out in space well away from the main fighting, in a ship with jump capability, so it’s clearly possible that a very few individuals could survive in the face of the annihilation of the majority.
We agree on the point of the show being more than simply “find a new place to live”; ultimately, though, that is what the aired ending boils down to. The tacked on, “150,000 years later” bit didn’t really address the issue of humanity having learned from its experiences as it was pretty clear that any lessons that the Galactica survivors could have imparted to their descendants had been lost in time. Head-Baltar and Head-Caprica disagreed and debated whether or not anything would change at the end of the show.
I think you missed my proposed ending (actually, endings, as I proposed three). You have assumed that because my ending concluded with humans making their way back to the 12 colonies, that war would ensue. Re-read my last post; I posed 3 different endings in the form of questions. The exact quote is:
“Now, the roles are reversed, what does humanity do? Do they return to the colonies and try to take them back? Do they accept their fate and remain in space? Do they broker a deal leading to cooperation with the Cylons?”
Option 1: “Do they return to the colonies and try to take them back?” RESULT: War (even Head-Baltar and Head-Caprica disagreed on whether this was likely to occur in the ending as aired).
Option 2: “Do they accept their fate and remain in space?” RESULT: Both accept their fate (i.e. NO WAR); bleak and hopeless but still, not war.
Option 3: “Do they broker a deal leading to cooperation with the Cylons?” RESULT: Cooperation with the Cylons (i.e. NO WAR)
Nowhere did I say that both races accepting one another is completely hopeless; in fact, that is exactly what I offer up in two of my proposed three endings.
Re: technology outpacing humanity; I didn’t suggest that you called it terrifying. *I* said it was *SUPPOSED* to be terrifying, and it absolutely was. How do you reason with a machine? How do you appeal for mercy? How do you teach it the importance of life? I suppose one view of the whole mechanical to biological transition made by the Cylons is that perhaps the Cylons realised their mechanical nature was a barrier to some future reconciliation with humanity and so took biological form in order to help facilitate this. We do know that at least some (Cavil) found biological form repulsive and a step backward, which is an interesting point in and of itself because the suggestion made in the show was that the Cylons took human form to become closer to their “god”. Cavil’s rejection of this is a direct rejection, on his part, of the importance of being closer to their “god”. I believe that Cavil even ridiculed the importance assigned to “god” by the other Cylon models. I don’t recall whether or not he went so far as to declare himself, essentially, an atheist, though I think that was implied.
Dudes, we warned you about this.
About what? it’s a perfectly civil reply. I made no insulting comments. I debated the show. The reply is on-topic.
This episode was awesome. I rate it as the best T.V. show ending I have seen. Not many good Sci-fi shows even end yet alone finish well. The only T.V. show ending that compares is the Christmas specials of the british office in my opinion.
p.s. Reading through other comments I agree with Vic!
Although it is becoming a non-issue as time goes by, it puzzles me no end to hear posters here extol the virtues of the last episode of BSG.
Whatever standard they may be using to conclude it was “awesome”, or the best show ever, or “wrapped all loose ends up” must be in some other universe than mine.
The show was objectively flawed; it ignored past shows, was logically and factually inconsistent in the facts both prior and the alleged following timelines, it mixed science and magic in a most amateurish hamfisted way. It expected to just make up a bunch of “just so” stories in its conclusion, and demanded faithful viewers not ask any deep questions, just swallow the whole thing w/eyes closed and agree it was really good.
For anyone with even a little quality control standards, with even a little intellectual investment in the show (and that includes the writers), this last episode was a total muckup of lazy, inattentive ad hoc storytelling.
There is no whining here, and there no need to “get over it”. It was just bloody awful.
Screen Ranters,
What T said!
Fantastic ending – simply fantastic!
Sure, there were a few flaws (almost none of which struck me as important DURING the episode), but all-in-all, the finale delivered.
To the commenters, here and elsewhere, that have allowed there intolerance of religion to color their experience – too bad.
Throughout all of recorded history, there are instances of ‘divine providence’ – a storm that arrives just-in-time to turn the tide of battle, timing of a gathering that is just too convenient to be coincidence. Not to mention the Prophets that have foretold events to come. There was nothing inconsistent in the ‘rules’ of BSG, with the way billions of people accepts our lives are governed.
For those disappointed by the unresolved threads (ie: Daniel), I think (hope) “The Plan” will tie some of them up.
The one scene that I think created an unnecessary discontinuity was when Kara’s Viper explodes – then is found on charred-Earth. Her Viper should have just ‘disappeared’ down the gravity well.
Did anyone else specifically think that the Opera House vision paid off incredibly cheap? I mean, it’s not like structures of the ship resembled an opera house very well. Rip off. What it did do justice to was an earlier vision of Gaius and Six holding a baby, with Six saying that she was the future/salvation of the race. BUT the two did not have her as a baby, but a few years out. Is that a tot? LOL.
@MAKsys – That’s a broad brush you’re using to explain why the secular didn’t like the series. Judging by what I’ve read on other sites, reaction is largely negative (for the reasons that have already been elaborated on here), regardless of people believing in religion or not. Everyone likes something about the ending, but the actual explanations are where people start to complain.
Here’s the thing; speaking for myself, I *personally* found the religious aspects to be intellectually offensive *BUT*, this is a relatively minor part of why I disliked the ending. I’ve already given two examples of endings that were truly atrocious and did not have any religious aspect to them at all (B5 and DS9; and, no, the ‘prophets’ were not gods – they were clearly established to be aliens who had been considered gods at one time in a classic case of, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, as Arthur C. Clarke put it).
Let’s assume that the ending came down to finding some alien technology that would let humanity defeat the Cylons and get them safely to a planet where they could settle down… that would ALSO have been an atrocious ending for the same reasons the aired ending was atrocious; because it renders the struggle, and the entire story that came before that point, meaningless. It’s an external element introduced at the last minute to resolve a plot-point that otherwise could not be resolved.
As for the religious comments… err… no. Occam’s Razor applies here… why look for a complex solution when the simple solution fits, particularly in the absence of any proof to the contrary? There has never been any case of ‘divine providence’ that can quantitatively, qualitatively with hard, reproducible evidence prove anything other than coincidence occurred.
As for the comments on prophets; prophecies are always notoriously vague and have ALWAYS been identified AFTER the fact where it’s very clear that the human mind’s propensity for finding patterns has moulded the ‘prophecy’ to fit the event.
@Ian
Believe it or not, I would have preferred more concrete answers myself.
Vic
@Vic – I absolutely believe you, and I’m not at all surprised to hear you say that.
People have seized on the fact that I’m an atheist as the reason I didn’t like the ending. Absolutely not… and hopefully my last reply makes clear my reasoning.
Star Trek, as much as I love it, had a nasty habit of creating an impossible scenario from which there’s no escape… and then at the bleakest moment someone shouts out, “Stream chronitons through the deflector array and create an inverse wave-pulse at a frequency of 3.2GHz”… and the problem magically goes away.
I hate that kind of ending! it’s a cop-out. The viewer with a vested interest in the plot development loves to journey with the characters and try to work out a solution with them. When the solution is as impossible to fathom as this, it cheapens the story, and frankly, bringing as powerful a character as a god into the thing means there’s no way they could ever have failed to win.
I’ve touched on that sort of thing before, when people argue with me about plot points that make no sense, even in a sci-fi or fantasy film. “Just enjoy it! Don’t analyze everything!”
I can do that to a point, but things that happen in a work of fiction have to make sense within that universe in order to maintain a suspension of disbelief.
Now they’d been hinting at the whole God aspect for a long time on the show, but it was always kind of “out there.” To have something miraculous happen in order to wrap things up on a show so embedded in the plausible science side of sci-fi did seem like a cop-out.
Vic
@ Ian – my brush may be broad, but your’s (reaction largely negative) is flat out wrong. Over on the SciFi forum, the reaction (as judged from the polls is overwhelmingly positive).
What I don’t get is what show have you been watching for the past six years?!?!
You were told they were coming to Earth – THIS Earth.
The whole journey was guided by the Pythia/Dying Leader prophecies.
Kara’s childhood vision of the ‘eye’ were dead-on, she was alternately claimed to be an Angel and the ‘harbinger of death’. Ultimately, you saw Kara’s Viper explode, then she resurrected in a pristine Viper.
And after six years of watching this, you claim to have found the religious aspects of the show “intellectually offensive”?
You know what I find so stupid as to offend my intellect, shows like Dr. Phil, Oprah and Jerry Springer – and you know what I do, I DON’T WATCH THEM.
@MAKsys – My brush is… “wrong” ?!?! Bit of a mixed metaphor.
No, we were not told they were coming to THIS Earth; they found Earth… it was a nuclear wasteland. THIS Earth is not the original Earth.
The Journey wasn’t guided by the Pythia prophecies – the story diverged from those prophecies long ago and in the end, it was not a dying leader who led humanity to ‘Earth’, but an angel (in the literal sense) who was also called the ‘harbinger of death’, another bit of throw-away drama that never led anywhere. as it was always implied that ‘harbinger of death’ was in reference to humanity, not the Cylons.
Yes, I found the religious aspects to be intellectually offensive. They were sufficiently suppressed in the first 2 seasons (primarily Caprica-6) and at least part of the third that I could overlook them. Put another way, the story itself was compelling enough that I wanted to see where it went, regardless.
… and here’s where I restate, yet again, that it is less the religious nature of things that annoyed me about the ending and more that the story that had been built up over the four seasons was essentially rendered meaningless.
Oh, and I don’t know where you’re looking on the sci-fi BSG forum; I’ve spent a good bit of time on there and the bulk of messages are completely unrelated to BSG and those that are, are split roughly 50/50. I based my comment on the fact that if you google, “BSG finale” and browse around the sites such as this one, the result is overwhelmingly negative, for the reasons that have already been brought up on this forum by me and others.
@Vic – I know what you’re saying; it’s funny, because it can go the other way, too. In Star Wars, The Force was always a mystical force, not religious, not magic, but somehow still beyond definition by science… until Episode 1 when it suddenly became some form of microbe or genetic material (midichlorians*).
For me, that was somewhat of a let-down as it, again, seemed to go against the grain of what had been defined before.
* This may have been touched on in the novels but they are non-canon, so I’m going purely by what was in the movies.
I just finished watching the final, a big fan of sci fi for many years. I loved the characters, but the ending is not special. All twlight zone fans, old Star Trek, Babylon 5, many mant old sci fi stories have a same Adam and Eve, science mixing with religion concept. The turn of the wheel, one age fades into mythos, forgotten, then born again. The agnels are NOT just Jewish/Christian lines, older religions, Indian/Native North American, South American tribes have all many similar story lines. Check out Europe Pagan myths, etc, etc,the play is always the same, only the actors are better. BUT it was still fun to watch.
@Ian – you’re trying way to hard, which is your prerogative.
First – Earth. Concluding the show with ‘another’ Earth would have been cheap. The whole show is wrapped around them being ‘us’ – not aliens with similar failings/struggles, but humans, tied into our own mythologies.
As for the ‘harbinger of death’, that phrase was uttered by a Cylon, and Kara was a harbinger of death – for the Cylons. This isn’t that difficult.
As for fan reaction, as in all things, the whiners/complainers are over-represented. Go look at the POLLS (like I said). They’re no where near 50/50. You are in the distinct minority.
Go back and watch the first two seasons – there is no shortage of religious references.
I would imagine most watchers of the show can find more than a few questions they would like answered, and can point out a plot twist or development they would change – but your complaints go above and beyond that. Face it – your problem with the series is all wrapped around YOUR problem (read: intolerance) with religion.
@Ian
You may have found it “intellectually offensive” but intellect and belief in God are not mutually exclusive, however much you continue to insist that they are.
To me it’s ridiculous to NOT believe in God.
Vic
Whether you are a believer in God, an atheist, or have come to terms that there is something of a greater power, why cannot we just enjoy the show and with it’s ideals. I mean, it is just a show, and why does Religion always get the shortend of the stick?
I am Catholic, yet I listen heavily to Tool even with Maynard’s ideals about religion, and I also am a huge fan of Berserk even with the creator’s input about God in the Berserk world.
After all, this is only a show and what the creators have put in, it is their world, why cannot we just enjoy it? If the writers want to input some religious context in their show, it pertains to that show’s guidelines on how it furthers the story, right? Why cannot we just enjoy that?
SK47:
Well said and I challenge anyone else out there to address the show without going down the religion path.
It’s easily doable… I’ve done it for 6 years.
EVERYONE NEEDS TO REMEMBER SOMETHING:
This is the beauty of entertainment, art or what have you.
It’s a massive Rorschach inkblot test.
We see what we either relate to or hate or find appealing or what have you. It’s our escape in whatever form we look to it as.
Some of us wanted answers.
Some of us like the open ended finale.
That’s the awesome power of individual perspectives. The different ways we see things.
When I came away from the finale, I had a specific perspective (ONE THAT I NEVER ACTUALLY MENTIONED) but as I read what everyone has to say, though it may have differed from my take, I think, “Hey, that’s pretty interesting. I like where this person is coming from”
I’ve gotten new ideas from the different perspectives. It makes me think, rather than dig in and try to defend my perspective. I like my perspectives being challenged. It opens up my world to so much more.
Sheesh, I hate ranting. But I am done.
Peace out and be nice everyone. Remember, we all have different colored lenses.
@MAKsys – You can keep scream loud and often that I hated the show because it had religious overtones, but simply saying something is so doesn’t make it so. I’ve given a clear reason why I disliked the ending and given two other examples to illustrate my meaning, neither of which involved religion in any way.
The rest of your message adds nothing to the conversation; it’s simply a rehash of your attempts to twist my words to fit you misinterpretation of my comments. This makes your reply irrelevant and boring and not any more of a reply than this. When you go back and read what I wrote and stop trying to twist it around, come back a
@MAKsys – that got cut off; it should have ended with:
“… come back and we’ll talk some more”
@Vic – Oh, come on! You *KNOW* I have *NEVER* said that intellect and belief in god are mutually exclusive… my EXACT quote was:
“I *personally* found the religious aspects [of the show] to be intellectually offensive *BUT*, this is a relatively minor part of why I disliked the ending.”
I fully qualified my statement to indicate it was in the context of the show. I’m sorry you missed that, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume it was an honest mistake because, thus far, I’ve not seen any evidence that you have attempted to deliberately misinterpret my comments.
I’m not going to get into a deep religious discussion here because my comments will just be deleted. However, since you made the statement you did, I will respond, this once, to that part of your post:
Let me start by saying that I absolutely DO NOT believe that intellect and belief in god are mutually exclusive; I have known very smart and very dumb people from both sides of the argument. Although I did not initially say this, I will further qualify my comment by saying that I believe it is entirely possible for intellectual people to believe but I do not accept that belief is, in and of itself, an intellectual exercise. I don’t say this to ridicule but simply because, and I think you would have to agree, belief is defined as acceptance of a claim IN THE ABSENCE OF SUPPORTING FACTS.
In order to be considered a fact, a claim must meet certain standards, the least of which is hard, fast, verifiable evidence to back it up. If a source makes a claim, then at a bare minimum, another independent source must verify that claim with hard, fast evidence.
Believers consider god (or gods) an absolute, but there are 10,000+ religions in this world and only a handful believe in the same god you do. Excluding the differences even within christianity about what is the “right” thing to believe, the only source material is the bible, which is absolutely chock full of contradictions, thereby excluding the possibility of determining the factuality of the claims.
A purely intellectual approach, such as that offered by science, starts with the presumption that a claim is INVALID. A hypothesis is formed, based on currently known facts (that have already been demonstrated to meet the stringent requirements I already detailed), a series of tests is formed to determine the validity of that hypothesis. If the hypothesis is shown to be incorrect, it is discarded and a new hypothesis formed based on the newly available facts (negatives can be at least as useful as positives).
The point is that a purely intellectual approach EXCLUDES simple belief, starts with the known facts and sees where they lead. A belief-based approach, by definition, starts with a conclusion and ignores anything that would discount that conclusion.
That belief-based systems were ONCE an intellectual pursuit I can fully accept. Man is driven to explain the world around him. Without scientific tools and only a rudimentary understanding of the world around him, various cultures have believed in magic, single gods, multiple gods, nature spirits and so on, all in an attempt to understand the world and its mysterious processes. A later model suggested that all things could be explained through various ratios of earth, wind, air and water. Later still, we discovered the atom, then we discovered quantum mechanics and we’re on the verge of going deeper still. What I’m saying is that religion is Science 1.0. It was an idea, an attempt to explain the world, but we’ve moved on and we have better models to describe our universe and those models are verifiable, are quantifiable, are reproducible and observable. No, we can’t answer every question, but there will always be more questions; that is the nature of what we are. No one believes that people are made up of various parts of wind, earth, air and fire… it was a perfectly reasonable (for the time) attempt to explain the world, but we now know better and discarding those old ideas when they can’t be validated is the natural evolution of our intellectual interrogation of the universe.
Hopefully, you see the distinction between the two claims, even though I hadn’t actually made either in my original comment, where I was simply trying to point out that the ending failed to satisfy because the religious nature of the ending made the intellectual exercise of trying to fathom where the show was heading a pointless exercise, entirely derailed by an external element that changed the entire premise. Put another way, I was referring to the ENDING, not to religion itself.
Just a question, but if you’ve made your point already, isn’t it moot to repeat it?
I’m guessing from your verbose replies that you aren’t a fan of twitter.
@Bruce – The fact that people are misconstruing, either deliberately or not, what I am saying, suggests that I do need to repeat. I’m not particularly interested in those who are deliberately twisting what I say, but for those who have raised interesting points or who have misunderstood what I have said, I feel the least I owe them is to clarify what I’ve said should they take offense.
Oh, and actually, I do twitter, though it’s not my preferred medium, to be sure.
@Ian – you’ve taken this way to personally, which is my fault.
I should have made a general reply to all the atheists who found the introduction of God ‘intellectually offensive’ or otherwise disturbing and incongruent with the theme of the show.
I’ve read a good many posts with derisive comments like “God did it”, from people that clearly have an emotional investment in attacking religion.
What grates on me is how truly intolerant the supposedly enlightened really are – my favorite current example is the Global Warming TrueBelievers. Anyone that doesn’t fall in line is akin to a Nazi. The Obamaists are another example.
I have a problem with homosexuality – many who support that lifestyle would call my homophobic (incorrectly). I’ve never watched a complete episode of ‘Will & Grace’ cause it makes me uncomfortable. Yet I’ve never felt the need to confront anyone over their sexuality – in person or on a forum. I certainly could have done without Gaeta’s ‘coming out’, but it didn’t ruin the BSG experience for me.
Can I ask a question, it is about Gaeta from MAKsys’ response above. What made people think that Gaeta was gay in the first place? Reason I am asking is because through out the seasons before they made the character come out I did not think that Gaeta was gay.
So what made people say, ‘Oh, Gaeta is definately a gay-boy’? Was it the way he expressed himself, the way he talked, his body motions? If so, that is kind of insulting dontcha think?
SK47,
I believe Gaetas Homosexuality was revealed in onlne webisodes called The Face Of the Enemy.
I never saw them .
Well…. I’ve decided to shut down comments on this article. I think we’ve said all that can be on this and it’s most definitely been heading off in directions that are spinning farther and farther from the show.
It’s been a great discussion, but methinks it’s time to move on.
Vic